Last night I went to a baby shower where a good number
of the attendees were babies themselves. I kept thinking
how ridiculous it is that people pour so much time and energy
into supporting a single life, when there are so many others
that need more support.

Interface matters to me more than anything else, and it always has. I just
never realized that. I've spent a lot of time over the years desperately
trying to think of a "thing" to change the world. I now know why the search
was fruitless -- things don't change the world. People change the world
by using things. The focus must be on the "using", not the "thing". Now
that I'm looking through the right end of the binoculars, I can see a lot
more clearly, and there are projects and possibilities that genuinely
interest me deeply.

I got this wild dream in my head about what would help mankind the most, to go off and do something dramatic, and I just happened to get a picture of how, if people started to learn to interact with computers, in collective ways of collaborating together, and this was way back in the early 50s, so it was a little bit premature. So anyways, I had some GI bill money left still so I could just go after that, and up and down quite a bit through the years, and I finally sort of gave up.

A little over a decade ago the Air Force, as chief consumer of advanced technology, realized that applied research is essentially the middleman drawing heavily on supplies from the basic research of gifted scientists. But it faced the situation where its raw material was fast diminishing...

AFOSR AND BASIC RESEARCH

The Air Force Office of Scientific Research is charged with building a stockpile of knowledge which someday will provide the know-how for developing Air Force weapon systems of the future. In one sense, AFOSR may be thought of as a very inexpensive insurance policy for future defense. Stockpiling basic knowledge today may, and no doubt will, preclude such expensive "crash" programs as those brought on by World War II...

AFOSR operates on the premise that scientific advances cannot be ordered or scheduled, but that selection and emphasis from the infinite possible directions of basic research can foster those scientific areas most probably related to present and future Air Force needs. For this reason, AFOSR acts only on unsolicited, original research proposals offered by scientists in universities, nonprofit institutions, and industry. Selction is made essentially on the basis of originality, significance to science, scientific competence of the investigator, and relevance of the proposed research to Air Force needs.